Local News in Brief : Ex-Fugitive Seeks Deal
A “Password” champion accused of swindling $100,000 out of an insurance company with a bogus death report on his wife may try to plead guilty to reduced mail fraud charges, his attorney said Thursday.
Kerry Ketchem, 36, a fugitive who assumed an alias and won $58,600 on “Super Password,” was indicted by a federal grand jury in San Francisco on Wednesday for five counts of mail fraud.
His attorney, Barry Hammond, said Thursday he would seek “some kind of settlement,” either by seeking dismissal of the charges or by entering a guilty plea “if the case appears to be open-and-shut.”
After viewers recognized him as a wanted man, Ketchem was arrested Jan. 14 by Secret Service agents as he came to the Hollywood office of the show’s production company to pick up the winnings he garnered under the name Patrick Quinn.
The indictment charges Ketchem with mail fraud for submitting a false death report on his wife in 1985, when he claimed that she had been killed in a car wreck in England. His wife reportedly told the FBI that she had no idea her husband had submitted the insurance claim.
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